At her touch, I felt a warm little shiver I did not associate with friendship. And why not? Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling; under the lights and the greeny-blue sky of a deepening Texas dusk, she was way beyond pretty. Things between us might have progressed faster than they did, except for what happened during that halftime.
The band marched around the way high school bands do, in step but not completely in tune, blaring a medley you couldn’t quite figure out. When they finished, the cheerleaders trotted to the fifty-yard line, dropped their pompoms in front of their feet, and put their hands on their hips. “Give us an L!”
We gave them what they required, and when further importuned, we obliged with an I, an O, an N, and an S.
“What’s that spell?”
“LIONS!” Everybody on the home bleachers up and clapping.
“Who’s gonna win?”
“LIONS!” Given the halftime score, there wasn’t much doubt about it.
“Then let us hear you roar!”
We roared in the traditional manner, turning first to the left and then to the right. Sadie gave it her all, cupping her hands around her mouth, her ponytail flying from one shoulder to the other.
What came next was the Jim Cheer. In the previous three years-yes, our Mr. LaDue had started at QB even as a freshman-this had been pretty simple. The cheerleaders would yell something like, “Let us hear your Lion Pride! Name the man who leads our side!” And the hometown crowd would bellow “JIM! JIM! JIM!” After that the cheerleaders would do a few more cartwheels and then run off the field so the other team’s band could march out and tootle a tune or two. But this year, possibly in honor of Jim’s valedictory season, the chant had changed.
Each time the crowd yelled “JIM,” the cheerleaders responded with the first syllable of his last name, drawing it out like a teasing musical note. It was new, but it wasn’t complicated, and the crowd caught on in a hurry. Sadie was doing the chant with the best of them, until she realized I wasn’t. I was just standing there with my mouth open.
“George? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer. In fact, I barely heard her. Because most of me was back in Lisbon Falls. I had just come through the rabbit-hole. I had just walked along the side of the drying shed and ducked under the chain. I had been prepared to meet the Yellow Card Man, but not to be attacked by him. Which I was. Only he was no longer the Yellow Card Man; now he was the Orange Card Man. You’re not supposed to be here, he had said. Who are you? What are you doing here? And when I’d started to ask him if he’d tried AA for his drinking problem, he’d said-
“George?” Now she sounded worried as well as concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The fans had totally gotten into the call-and-response thing. The cheerleaders shouted “JIM” and the bleacher-creatures shouted back “LA.”
Fuck off, Jimla! That was what the Yellow Card Man who’d become the Orange Card Man (although not yet the dead-by-his-own-hand Black Card Man) had snarled at me, and that was what I was hearing now, tossed back and forth like a medicine ball between the cheerleaders and the twenty-five hundred fans watching them:
“JIMLA, JIMLA, JIMLA!”
Sadie grabbed my arm and shook me. “Talk to me, mister! Talk to me, because I’m getting scared!”
I turned to her and managed a smile. It did not come easy, believe me. “Just crashing for sugar, I guess. I’m going to grab those Cokes.”
“You aren’t going to faint, are you? I can walk you to the aid station if-”
“I’m fine,” I said, and then, without thinking about what I was doing, I kissed the tip of her nose. Some kid shouted, “Way to go, Mr. A!”
Rather than looking irritated, she wriggled her nose like a rabbit, then smiled. “Get out of here, then. Before you damage my reputation. And bring me a chili dog. Lots of cheese.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The past harmonizes with itself, that much I already understood. But what song was this? I didn’t know, and it worried me plenty. In the concrete runway leading to the refreshment stand, the chant was magnified, making me want to put my hands over my ears to block it out.
“JIMLA, JIMLA, JIMLA.”
The memorial assembly was held at the end of the new school year’s first day, and if one can measure success by damp hankies, the show Sadie and I put together was boffo. I’m sure it was cathartic for the kids, and I think Miz Mimi herself would have enjoyed it. Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows underneath the armor, she once told me. I’m no different.
